


Home

by RavensWing



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Opposite of Frohana, Sex as a Weapon, author is a real POS, elsa and kristoff are kind of evil?, lots of obscure mythology, me trying to put a made up world into a real world timeline, this is very full of nope, trigger warning: pregnancy, words that are actually razor blades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 19:16:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16939134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensWing/pseuds/RavensWing
Summary: “No. Every thought, every memory, you must take it all.”





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a fic exchange knowing specifically that the recipient loves to be emotionally tortured and had this idea bouncing around in my head of: "What happens if there were lasting side effects to Anna being frozen solid?" 
> 
> Anyway it is long and awful and not happy even in the slightest so turn back if you want nice things.

**.i  
Marseille, France**

…

_“No. Every thought, every memory, you must take it all.”_

…..

She often asks him about the day they met or rather the first day she remembers meeting him because those two days are two different things indeed. She wants to hear them both, but he only ever recounts the later.

He tells her about the day she woke in an unfamiliar bed with him hovering above her. She had not known the place that she would later discover was his - no - _their_ apartment near the southern coast of France. She had not known the smells in the air or the clatter of the sea port downstairs. She had not seen the drapes or the armchair before that instant, but had seen his eyes. She knew the curve of his mouth, the height of his cheekbones - but she did not know why or how she knew this. Her mind had searched for his name, their relation, but came up only on the fact that she had no recollection of his or even her own name.

“Who are you?” Her tongue stuck to the sides of her teeth and her head swam.

“Askr.” His voice rang with stunning familiarity, but the name held no such power. It did not fit. Her mind scrambled to escape the muffled gray that covered her every thought.

“And who am I?” It came a bit pinched and frantic as she struggled to sit up beneath a mountain of blankets. The panic welled within her as the fog cleared but she still could not recall a thing.

He had smiled at her question, but not in amusement. She had traced its weariness with her gaze, charted the sadness the way men chart the land and sky, noted the dimness that had crept into eyes so warm. It said a thousand things in a tongue she could not understand no matter how many times she revisited it in her mind.

He took her hand then in both of his and looked at her with a regret only a man telling a lie he did not wish to tell could and said: “You are Embla and you are my wife.”

…..

She dreams of the creation of the world, of primordial waters and demigods. She dreams of a tree so large it carried the universe on its branches, in its trunk, through its roots. She is part of that tree though she is adrift in a watery world without shape or form and everything is gray.

Then there is pain - transformation - and she feels her lungs fill with color for the first time. She is born now in this technicolor world and yet she is so sure she has lived before. The life of hazy existence at the mercy of unending waves surely meant something even though she cannot remember it.

But now she is breathing and surely that meant something too.

…..

She does not leave the apartment once that first week. The headaches and weather and something she cannot explain keep her indoors. She looks at the door that led out of their small space and clutches the thick woolen blanket up around her neck. She can walk out of it any time she wants, and yet she does not believe that to be true. Even though she has seen Askr walk in and out multiple times something in her knows that doors are supposed to stay shut.

She chases that feeling through her mind to find its root, but all she finds is smoke.

…

Winter is losing its edge and fades more and more into spring with each day. The afternoons are warm, but she does not feel it. She stays inside by the fire with her blanket dawn tight around thin shoulders and shivers.

He squats in front of where she sits and looks up at her with those eyes tinged with sadness. His broad shoulders seem wider at this angle as he reaches a hand to her cheek and touches the soft skin there.

“You’re still cold.” The way he says ‘ _still_ ’ with such a sense of history makes her tremble for a new reason.

Has she always been this way? Will it never change? She cannot imagine a future when she does not remember her past. She cannot remember who she is. She cannot remember how long she has been cold. Her mind is rattles with emptiness and yet when she looks at him and the noise quiets. She knows him and the love of him. He anchors her.

She presses a frigid hand against the back of his own on her face and reaches for him with the other.

“Then warm me.”

Slipping into his arms is the first time she feels like she could belong in this world. It is the first time she believes she may have ever lived in this place. The pressure of him against her is familiar enough to make her forget that she has no concept of home. She knows him. She loves him. She can think of worse foundations upon which to rebuild a life.

…

They are man and wife in every sense of the word. So when he sinks into the cradle of her thighs and presses into her yielding warmth she gasps at how well he fits. Her body accepts his with a punishing surrender and for that one moment she stops shivering. As he moves above her, his body pressing and shielding hers on all sides, sparks dancing over her skin, she wonders how she ever could have forgotten _this_.

…

He tells her stories of their life, of what he knows of hers, and paints a picture of what had existed before she woke up empty. He is a fisherman in the bustling seaport. They met on the wharves. They had a simple wedding in a simple church and live a simple life.

He does not mention friends.

He does not mention family.

When she asks after the idea he meets her eyes with a look that suggests he needs his next words as much as she does:

“We are the only two that matter. We are all the other needs.”

…

She is one week old when he tells her they are moving somewhere that she will not shiver and shake at all hours.

“Where will we go?”

He wraps her tight in his arms to press his heat into her and kisses her temple. “Anywhere but north.”

…..

…..

…..

**.ii  
French Algiers**

…..

_He had not wanted this._

_This was not what he wanted._

_Despite the thaw, she had never been the same since those moments she frozen through. Ice lingered so that no matter what attempt was made, Anna was perpetually cold._

_They all ignored it in the summer, the early autumn. No one wanted a reminder of the moments on the fjord where they almost lost her forever but once the weather turned they could look away no more. Her lips tinged purple. Her fingers and toes were white with cold. Though she never complained, not even once, he saw the way she huddled closer to the fire with blankets shrouding her when she thought he was not watching._

_Elsa saw it, too._

…

The water calls to her. It sparkles and shines in an endless expanse of glittering blue and she swears that whatever her life had been there had been water in it.

“I must have lived by the sea.” She tells Askr as they stand together on the bow of the ship. “I must have lived right upon it. I know this sight.”

“We had our home by the sea. We lived upon it.” He says.

“But I must have lived upon it my entire life. I must have always lived by the sea.”

She tries to force her mind to dredge up something that would validate the feelings coursing through her but returns void. She tugs her cloak a little tighter around her neck and shivers.

…

She dreams one night that she finds the edge of the world with the ocean spilling over to bathe the stars below. She knows in her dream that she has journeyed here for a purpose, though she cannot remember what it is. She tries to reach the edge, rowing her small boat to the fullness of her strength, but cannot. No matter how hard she tries to throw herself to the stars something retrains her.

She collapses on her oars, exhausted. It is only then that she looks behind her to see find her small craft moored in ice.

…

He does not speak French well which surprises her since her second first memory of him is in the language’s home country. It is not his mother tongue, and though he stumbles often to find just the right way to communicate he refuses to use any other language to speak to her. The idea of hidden words sitting on the back of his tongue, deep in his throat, drives her mad.

He wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her tight into his side. She curves into him. Her body knows his.

“Some things, Embla, are best left unsaid.”

…

“What is home? What does it feel like?

“Home feels like belonging.”

…

She finds herself above deck at most hours of the day. The space below is too confining, uncomfortable, and she craves the sight of the sea in the way her body craves Askr. The ocean air is cool enough for most people, but it cuts through her clothes like knives. She takes to carting a sealed tarp around for her excursions to block the wind and keep in what little heat she could produce.

She stays above not just to escape the stench of overcrowding but to ease her stomach.

It is not seasickness. She knows that. She can feel the difference.

She wonders if he knows, if she had told him yet about the child she bears. She wonders how long the child has been within her. Her stomach is flat but firm, unyielding when she presses there because she has someone inside of her.

He may know. He may know how many fluxes she has missed and how soon the child will come, but she does not want to ask him just yet. The thrill of _knowing something_ without it being secondhand, something ghostly, is intoxicating and she wants to keep it all to herself for just a little while.

…

The sixth morning they make landfall and she immediately overwhelmed by the scent of dust. The ocean breeze turns warmer with each step she takes into the city made of limestone and coral. The sun blinds her as it reflects off of the surfaces of the strange architecture.

When her sight returns she sees dark men and women dressed in flowing robes. She sees strange animals and strange foods. She sees narrow streets of packed dirt lined with mysterious doors that could lead anywhere. She hears a dozen languages but does not stop to realize she understands more than French. She feels the baking heat of the African sun.

She wants to take it all in, to see everything, to absorb the essence of this new place as if learning its history will somehow reveal her own. They wander for hours. She leads. He follows.

Her skin turns scarlet, bright and painful, but she refuses to use the sun balm he attempts to slather on her. She enjoys the color rising so close to the shade of her hair, enjoys the heat bristling with each touch to combat the perpetual cold that chases through her blood. New constellations of freckles rise up under the crimson sky of her skin. She wishes she could chart them the way sailors do to find their way home but she cannot.

She does not know where she comes from.

She does not know where she is going.

All she knows is him.

…

They find an inn as the sun sinks over the horizon. For all the warmth that is baked into daylight hours the evening holds an unmistakable chill. Her sunburned skin somehow seems colder than it had before the abuse. She does not understand how that is possible.

Her wrists jingle with the strange, gold bangles she bought. They slide and slip along her wrist, her forearm, and create their own music. She had seen a woman dancing with every appendage decked with gold and the clatter of her jewelry had seemed magical. Now off the bustle of the street in the quiet of this room the tinkle of them seems lonely, hollow. They are no less beautiful than they were before, but they are changed and now she understands the look in Askr’s eyes whenever she catches him staring.

…

“I keep having dreams. Horrible dreams.”

“Let them go. They mean nothing. Let them go.”

…

The nights are too cold. The desert bleeds out every night until it is dead and desolate of heat and so they must keep searching for home.

They travel east by caravan. Their wool and silk are abandoned for the customary linen and cotton of the region. In the midst of the desert, by the heat of the sun, she thinks she may enjoy the faintest prickle of sweat between her breasts. She wants to lay flat on these dunes of sand and revel in the sensation of unapologetic warmth. She wants to tear off her layers, his, and press their skin together so that he can know the fire she carries within. She can not, however, and the caravan continues to make their way through Libya towards Egypt.

Each stop along the way has its own unique smell of dust and spice, but none are quite right. Her heart yearns for something different, deep, and green. It is not something she has smelled before, but she will know it when she does. Her body remembers thing that she does not.

One night between towns they camp in the middle of the desert. Tents are erected and fires built. Men are assigned guard and women are sent to sleep. She, however, cannot sleep without him. She grows too cold.

When she looks for him, she finds him stroking the long neck of a camel while murmuring something she does not recognize but knows is not French. When she asks him about it, the language and the affection for the animal, he shrugs.

“He reminded me of a friend I used to have.”

“Did I know him?”

“No. But I wish you did.”

…..

…..

…..

**.iii  
Barbary Coast**

…..

_Gerda found her crumpled on the floor of her room near frozen through again. It took an entire day of hot water bottles and warming pots beneath a mountain of thick wool covers to revive her._

_“She cannot stay here. I must send her away.” Elsa whispered to Kristoff one day with tears in her eyes._

_“She won’t leave without you.”_

_Elsa looked at her hands, sparking blue. “She will. She will have to.”_

…

Even beneath the traditional robes she has taken to wearing in lieu of the European fashions she had supposedly worn the rest of her life she still shivers. She is so cold, always so cold, but she knows it was not always this way. What her mind has forgotten, her body remembers.

She remembers heat, sweat, and breathlessness. She remembers the feel of sheets on naked skin. She remembers humid air sticking to her skin.

But when she tries to retrieve the memories attaches to the sensations - she cannot. She cannot reconstruct the places or times she experienced those things. She remembers nothing.

…

“Does home feel like sunshine? Does home feel like shade?”

“Home feels like safety.”

…

His skin burns, but not the way hers does. His face and hands take on a tawny glow the longer they stay on the Barbary Coast. The glowing red turns cinnamon as his hair bleaches white beneath the blazing sun, but the skin beneath his clothing stays the same. She traces that skin with her fingers, cherishes his scars with his lips, and feels the history in them.

She does not have any scars. Her hands are soft and uncalloused. She has searched her body for clues, but finds nothing. She finds no reason for the ice in her blood, for the absence of memory, and wonders if she even exists at all. Her skin feels too thin, translucent beneath the burns, and she feels that others can see through her as easily as air.

“Can you see me?” She presses her hands to her stomach, growing rounder by the day but still she says nothing.

“I see you.” He replies.

“But who am I?”

He smiles at that the same strained smile as the first time she asked that question and sighs. “You are Embla and you are my wife.”

…

Even in the warmest climes she dreams of ice and snow and wakes shivering. He curls around her then, her own personal shield of warmth, to protect her from sights unseen. He turns her in his arms and lets the tide of his passion burn out the remaining chill until she is slick with his sweat and the want of him.

Still when they drift to sleep once more she sees a flash of blue - of white blonde hair - and shivers.

…

They wander through a bustling marketplace strewn with exotic fruits and yards of vivid fabric. They linger over rich spices and nuts, take their time perusing earthen pots, but stop completely when they come to a stall filled with sparkling scraps of metal. Her wrists and fingers are already heavy with jewelry she has purchased along the many miles they have toured. Each piece is unique. Each one tells a story of where she has been and she remembers them all as if she can fill the emptiness of her past in a single year.

Here along a delta filled with crocodiles she finds her next memory.

It is a ring in the shape of a scarab. It has gold articulated wings that hide a turquoise stone the size and weight of a walnut, but when opened reveal not only the stone but hieroglyphs carved into its surface.

“What does it mean?” She asks the merchant as she slips the oversized ring onto her middle finger.

“She will rise again.” He replies.

She does not know why those words ring through her until her teeth rattle, but they do.

“Will she?” She is uncertain if she is asking the merchant or herself, but either way she receives no answer.

…

They do not stay in any one place for long. Instead the drift from city to city, town to town, down rivers and along roads in search of something she will never find. In each place she stops she sees the sense of belonging held by each resident. She envies that, craves that, but it eludes her.

“How can I know where I am going if I do not know from where I come?” She asks him one day as they travel with a new caravan to sights unseen.

“If you spend your life looking back, you will miss what waits in front of you.”

…

He says that the Great Pyramids remind him of the apex of her thighs and she blushes underneath her burned cheeks. He knows her body and her body knows his but her vacancy remains. She may know the shape and size of him, but she still catches on the edges of his smile that were not there before.

Something is different about him, about her, and she feels it.

She sees the tension in his lips, the straight lines of his shoulders and knows within herself that this is not who she married. She never doubts the validity of their union, only that it had not been this way. She knows he is changed. She cannot explain how she knows or why because she cannot recall anything before that morning in France in his - _no_ \- their home, but her heart knows.

Sometimes, just sometimes, when their eyes meet across the way, she knows she is changed too.

She hopes it is for the better.

…..

…..

…..

**.iv  
Malindi, Zanzibar**

…..

_They made all the preparations without telling her because she would never agree to the terms. She would die before she would leave her sister, her home, but they could not allow that. Coin and gold was accumulated. A residence was engaged. The details were stitched up and sealed._

_Meanwhile the winter deepened and Anna’s condition grew more severe. A portable fireplace had been commissioned and built so warmth would never be far on the rare occasions she slipped from under the mountain of furs and comforters in her chambers. She grew more agitated each day of her confinement. She had known limitations her entire life in the form of closed doors, barred gates, but never the limitation of her own body._

_The last night Kristoff held her as she wept with frustration onto his shoulder. Her tears soaked through his thin shirt (he can hardly stand to wear anything in her room these days as it is kept so boiling hot) and he finally accepts that no matter how much he hated this idea that it is the best for everyone. Before she fell asleep in his arms he pressed a firm kiss to her slacking mouth._

_“I love you, Anna.”_

_It would be the last time he spoke her name, her real name._

…

They charter passage on a boat from the Western Coast to India. Tales of sweltering heat that does not die off with the sun draws them. Perhaps, just perhaps, there they will find a place to call home.

The ship is overcrowded with passengers and cargo. It is not until the second day on the vessel that she realizes that most of the cargo are humans. She does not understand it at first when she sees them being forced to dance in chains, but Askr explains. They are to be bought and sold the way any common item would be in the marketplace.

For all the things she wishes she could remember, it is a strange feeling to now have something she wishes she could forget.

…

She dreams of water blue and flowing into lush green lands like lovers intertwined. The sky is cut by jagged peaks of rock in one direction and in the other by ships sailing on strange clouds.

She dreams of gates and doors that are more like walls - never opening, always closed. She is within those walls in a room filled with ice and snow. There are footprints in the powder that do not belong to her and she follows them for hours but never finds their maker. All she finds is that she is alone.

…

“Does home have a color? Does home have a scent?”

“Home has a heart.”

…

They stop on an island as small and strange as any other place they had stopped along the way and she knows this is not home. The sun and the surf is as much the same as it is different from the other places she has seen. The dark hair and eyes of the natives dockworkers is a sharp contrast to her fire red hair and skin. Somehow she knows that the next place they stop it will be no different.

In the back of her mind a quiet doubt takes root. The growth of it is insidious in nature, weaving through her thoughts, and she hates it for the truth she knows it carries.

She may never feel at home again.

…

A storm blows up off the sea before they can sail again and they take refuge at a local trade post which doubles as resting place for weary travelers. The air is as humid and heavy inside the building as it is outside, if not moreso. The interior of the coral stone building is dim and crammed with bodies and dark wood dining tables. Her clothes drip on an inlaid sandrock.

“Wait here. I will find us a room.” He says as he leaves her by the ornate wooden door carved with symbols she does not understand.

It is easy enough to melt into the shadows cast by lantern light and watch him disappear in search of the innkeeper. She waits there quiet and content in her duty when the door opens and strikes her. In steps a soaking man with blood red hair and eyes cut from emerald and something like a memory flashes in her mind.

 _Danger_. It hisses as their eyes catch catch though she cannot imagine why. This man seems no different from any other, though her body knows he is.

He locks her gaze and turns his frame in towards her. Other push past him into the dry inn, but he does not move for the inflow as the rain falls outside in sheets. A hint of a smile tugs at the corners of his wolfish mouth.

“Your Majesty.” He bows at the waist with flourish and the action catches her off guard. She presses hard into the wall as he comes up with mocking satisfaction. “We really must stop this tradition of accidental blows in lieu of proper greetings.”

She realizes in this heartbeat that this stranger presumes to know her. She thinks to tell him that is impossible, as impossible as it is that anyone would have reason to call her _Your Majesty_ , but she hesitates. For as many reasons as there is for why he cannot know her, there is just as ample reason for him to be someone who she could know. Just because she can not remember him did not mean that he can not remember her.

“Yes. We really must.” She curtsies and he laughs.

“You always have been a darling.” He steps into her and she tries to shrink back further but cannot. “So tell me princess, how does a delicious innocent like yourself end up on the trade circuit? Were you captured? Are you a serving wench?” He traces a fingertip down the column of her neck and she shudders for reasons having nothing to do with the cold. “Or are there other services you provide to those who pass through these ports?”

She knows what he is implying though she wishes she did not.

“I am here with my husband.” She should shove him away, but she does not. Instead she lets him stay close. She is not sure just what she will let him do in exchange for any idea of who she really is.

“A husband? So your sister married you off in the end anyway. A shame, really. We could have been so good together if you weren’t worth more to me dead.” His hand cups her throat now, not squeezing, but the implication is there. “Were you saddled with a Shah? A Sheik? Or were you burdened with a lowly prince?”

She can smell the alcohol on his breath as he leans in closer, hand tightening just enough.

“None of those.” She swallows compulsively. Her hands clench his wrist.

“Oh Anna.” He says and the sound of that name sends a shock through her entire system. “Did sister dearest sell you off to the highest bidder? I knew she was frigid, but perhaps I underestimated her.”

“Let her go.” It is him, her protector, with measured words covering raw fury.

The stranger rears back to see Askr standing firm as a mountain, broad shoulders straining. Blood red faces white gold and energy crackles. The grip on her throat loosens by degrees until she is released.

“I know you, ice man.” The stranger spits condemnation. “ _You_ are who she chose?”

“She chose nothing. She doesn’t remember any of it. Not a thing.”

“What is this? More magic? Another trick from the devil sister?” Incredulity oozes from his mouth.

“We all have blood on our hands. All but her. If you believe in God and his judgement then pray for your own absolution but leave her out of it.”

“And what of your absolution?” The Stranger sneers as he squares off with Askr. “What will you pray for?”

Askr’s face turns black, a shade she has not seen on him before, as he lifts a mighty fist and lands a solitary blow across the stranger’s jaw. The knuckles of her right hand tingle as if they know the feeling. The stranger crumples. Askr grips her arm and draws her out into the rain.

…

The storm lasts for hours and hours.

They find another inn, but she does not go inside. She stands on the mud slick street and lets the world wash her away. The cracked sky listens to the tempo of her heart and matches its drops to her. It knows her, but her mind does not. She knows nothing. She is nothing.

Who is Embla?

It is a question she has asked herself time and time again to a resounding silence.

Who is Anna?

Her skin sings and hums at that question as if straining to grasp something just out of reach.

The Stranger had known her. He had called her Anna and Your Majesty and fed her sweet half-truths laced with sharp glimpses into who she may have been before everything was gone. Gone, gone gone. She is tempted to go back to that first inn and suck more words from his venomous lips, to let him squeeze her throat a bit tighter if he will unriddle her existence, but she does not. Instead she stands and waits because she does not know where she comes from so how can she know where she is going?

“Come in now. Come in from the rain.” Askr comes alongside her in the deluge and guides her by the shoulders.

She does not want to go inside. She feels her entire life has been spent inside but is powerless to resist him. Her legs take stiff steps as he guides her to where he thinks she should go. She always goes where he says they will go.

He takes her to a small, dark room and strips off both of their soaking clothes. She is chilled through and through.They stand naked in front of the fire shuddering with such violence she fears she will crack all of her teeth. He wraps her in his large sweater, an article of clothing he has not worn in months for the heat but she wears nearly every night, and cups her shoulders. She looks up at him.

“Who am I?”

“You are Embla and you are my wife. Can’t that be enough?” He speaks French again and it is only then that she realizes he had spoken a different language to the stranger and she had understood. She had spoken a second language.

“He knew me. He called me another name. He said I have a sister.”

“He is gone now.”

“And my sister - is she gone as well? Am I gone? Am I Anna and am I gone? You knew Anna and she is gone?”

He releases a stuttered breath. The storm roils outside, agonizing and angry. The world knows her heart and screams her pain with a strength she cannot muster. It wails for her as her small reality collapses around her ears.

“No. You are here and so am I.”

“I am not here. I can not be here. I am not real.”

He stifles her chant with his mouth. She can taste his pain, his regret, as he crushes her against his body. She grips the thick of his shoulders, cutting half moons into whatever skin she can grab. She is hurting so he should hurt too. She knows that is selfish and petty because she loves him more than she loves anything else in this world, but she does not know who he is. She does not know who she is and something sharp takes hold.

He takes everything she gives him without complaint. He does not flinch when she mounts him with a scream. He can feel the betrayal radiating off of her and knows he deserves every blow, every scrape, every bite.

He knows what he will pray for tonight. It is the same prayer he has prayed since that first night in France.

_Please forgive me._

…

“Tell me.”

“I love you. I love you.”

“No. The truth.”

“That is the the only truth that matters.”

…

She does not know what to call him, this man who lies to her. He is not Askr anymore than she is Embla. He is not the first man. She is not the first woman, but he will not tell her any differently.

He touches her and she sobs.

…

The storm passes, but her fury does not. Rage suits her. Her exterior fits her interior and she blazes. Her emotions are an inferno that feeds itself and he watches her burn.

They re-embark the slaver ship and she feels the weight of chains she does not wear. She feels the heaviness of a history that she cannot know, a history tucked back in the mind of the man she cannot help but love. Her anchor, her foundation, he has fed her lies for as long as she can remember and now she chokes on them.

She is a compass spinning.

She does not know where she is going.

She does not know where she has been.

She blames him for that.

…..

…..

…..

**.v  
Bombay, India**

….

_The trolls come at night. Under the shroud of shadows they came, solid and somber, to go about their dark task. They had tried before to remove the chill from her blood, the ice from her bones, but had failed. Just like all other things on the earth, magic had its rules. It had its limits, but that would not stop them from taking something with them tonight._

_Before they began, Elsa bent and brushed a kiss to her sister’s forehead and whispered one last secret to the sleeping woman. She left the room them and Kristoff knew that would be the last he saw of Elsa. This would be last he would see of any of this, except for her._

_He would always have her. She would be safe from herself. That was all that mattered._

…

She does not wear her jewelry anymore although it would go splendidly with the scads of glittering gold draping every woman on the narrow winding streets. She fails to see its meaning now. Embla had loved it, but who is Embla? Surely she is not. She is Anna, but who is Anna? That knowledge is gone.

He knew Anna. He had loved Anna. So she cannot understand why he does not want her to know Anna. She should have gone back to The Stranger.

His honest hate was easier to swallow than loving lies.

…

She dreams every night now of a faceless woman that spews ice and venom. She dreams of creatures twenty feet tall made of snow and rage. She dreams of endless corridors with doors locked and barred. She dreams of shipwrecks and dead bodies on the ocean floor. She dreams of dying alone and wakes up gasping.

“Let them go.” He would murmur, stroking her hair if she lets him. “Let them go.”

“They aren’t just dreams, are they?” She stares at him through the dark. “Are these the things you won’t tell me?”

“Some things are best left unsaid. Some things are best left forgotten.”

…

The world smells like sweat and saltwater. She can taste it on her lips, can feel it soak into her pores, as she passes a street side shrine filled with candles and incense.

She should draw attention with her red hair, red skin, and red silk, but no one takes notice. They cannot see her. She does not exist.

…

He presses his hand against the undeniable swell of her abdomen. She still has not told him with words what her body betrayed by sight. Perhaps he has always known just as he has always just who she is.

Embla.

Anna.

She is both. She is neither.

“You should rest.”

“But then I will dream.”

And they both know that is no good.

…

There are many gods here, more than she has ever known could be, and they all are worshiped in their individuality and their oneness. She thinks she may like that idea. She may like that one god can be called many names and yet be the same as they ever have been. Perhaps she is a goddess, both Embla and Anna nested within the same shell.

Emblanna: the goddess of forgetting.

…

“Home is betrayal. Home is spite.”

“Home is trust. Home is hope.”

…

There is a festival of color and the streets and its occupants are exploding with vivid hues. It is a new year, she is told, but she did not know years could be old. She does not know how old she is.

She will fit in flawlessly in turquoise, magenta, and jade clouds with her vermilion hair and her scarlet skin, but she is not on the streets that day. She is alone in the small room they call home. He is out fetching the day’s food and water, and no doubt asking about after work he can do.

The pains come quick and sharp. Her body knows what to do even if she does not and for the first time in her memory she feels hot. Her skin sweats thick drops as she clenches her teeth and _pushes_. The world is white-hot and blinding. She does not know if she screams. She can taste blood in her mouth from where she bit her tongue. Then suddenly she is not the only one crying.

She reaches down between her legs and pulls forth the fruit of her labor. Through blurry eyes she recognizes they have a daughter. She is so small, so slick. A thick cap white hair covers her head. The mother shifts and reaches for the knife. She slices the cord connecting intimately connecting them and collapses back to the ground.

She had been alone, but now she is not. She knows she should clean them both, but she cannot move. She is too exhausted. The little bundle cuddles down into her breasts and grunts. She pulls aside the folds of her sari and watches through hazed vision as her daughter latches and feeds.

It is the last thing she sees before exhaustion takes hold and she slips off to sleep.

…

She wakes at the sensation of something wet dragging the length of her legs. It is her husband, the betrayer, cleaning her with touch so gentle she nearly slips back into sleep until she realizes an absence.

“Where is she?”

“She is here.”

He points to the bundle wrapped in clean cotton and sleeping beside her mother. She is pink, so pink, and tears come fresh at the sight of her.

“She will always know who she is.” She runs a finger down the newborn cheek. “She will always know her name.”

Mother leans and kisses babe as father resumes his work silently.  She realizes then that he has moved her from the floor to the bed. He had washed their child and the floor she had ruined in childbirth. He had done it all without question or need of recognition.

He loves her - them - so why he will not give her the one thing she wants most boggles her.  She is so full of love and sorrow and rage she feels as though her soul will rend itself to oblivion.

“Your mother was called Iduna.” His voice is hoarse. “Perhaps we could call her that.”

She nods her head and squeezes her eyes against the hot torrent of tears that continue to fall. She had forgotten she had a mother.

…

Her sleep is dreamless at first. It is a deep oblivion sinking into blissful nothingness. Then there is a blinding white and she is naked in a snowdrift. The chill of it shoots through her and she shudders and shudders until the shaking of her dreams causes her to wake unto the real world.

It is night. The world is quiet. Askr sleeps beside her. His large body radiates the heat she needs. On her other side lays Iduna - only a day old - and cold as ice.

…

She does not understand, can not. It is not possible for a human to be so cold and be alive, but Iduna does not recognize this rule. Her tiny body so pink and perfect casts a chill onto anyone who touches her. What kind of mother can hardly hold her own child for the fact that her hands and arms turn numb? What kind of mother can hardly feed her own babe without her milk freezing and frustrating them both?

She is sobbing into her hands when Askr comes to her and touches her back. His hand scorches through her clothes.

“We must go home.”

…..

…..

…..

**.vi  
Arendelle**

…

_She slept for a week after the trolls had rummaged through her mind and taken everything. She slept through ships and carriages before he deposited her on the bed that had been prepared for her in advance. Her breath was shallow in her chest and he wished he could leave her uncovered to watch the rise and fall of life but knew that would be foolish._

_He covers her carefully with layer after layer before he crawls beside her and pulls her close. For all that she has slept, he has not and he feels the exhaustion in his soul. Before he drifts away on the sweet tide of sleep he whispers in her ear._

_“Please forgive me.”_

…

She knows this place.

The moment the ship pulls into Arendelle’s fjord she feels the recognition of it sing through her blood. Her body reacts to the sight of the mountains, the green smell of trees, but she does not know their names. She does not know where she lived in this world, but she knows this is home.

The months of travel to arrive here are erased the moment she steps on shore. Everyone here is dressed in light apparel for the days of summer are here but she has returned to the heavy restrictive garb she had abandoned nearly a year ago for robes and shifts. She clutches the swaddled Iduna against her breast and looks around the docks for clues of where to go.

This is home. She should know where to go, but her mind does not. She cannot picture where she should go, so she trusts her body to remember what her mind cannot.

Step by step her feet carry her up off the docks and along cobblestone streets.

 _Home_. She thinks, the only thought in her mind.

 _Home_. She thinks and does not notice how everyone stops what they are doing as she passes. She does not notice how they whisper and stare.

 _Home_. She thinks, and is startled when her feet carry her to the gate of the palace.

Her spine prickles. She must have been wrong. She turns to Askr who has follow silently the entire way. His face is as uncertain as her own, but he raises a fist and bangs the wood.

…

They are inside the castle now and every sight she sees is like being reintroduced to an old friend. She knows this place. She knows it intimately.

They are brought to the Library. She knows that without being told. She knows the faces in the portraits on the walls even if she does not know their names or significance. She knows the furniture, ornate and lavish. She knows the servants trying their best to hide their awe at her appearance, at the child in her arms. She knows the woman in the center of the room.

In her dreams she is taller, the white blonde hair of her hair more jagged and violent, the tips of her fingers are spears made of ice. Here in this waking room she seems small, soft, and sad.

“You are my sister.” Anna knows. “You are the sister I forgot.”

“I am.” The Sister nods, but does not come to greet her. Instead her eyes go the man behind her with questions as sharp as the icicles in her dreams.

“It is the child.” Askr says and Anna had almost forgotten the slumbering Iduna in her arms. “She can do what you can.”

The Sister’s face goes white. Anna does not understand.

“How is that possible?”

“Her blood is your blood. Blood is unchanging.”

The Sister stands still for a moment but Anna can see her mind sprinting ahead. The Sister looks to the bundle in Anna’s arm with a gaze so hard it is disarming. She squeezes Iduna tighter. The infant stirs. Anna shifts her so her face is towards The Sister, The Aunt, as she wakes for a moment.

Chubby arms flap and hands scrub at sleepy eyes. Then, a seeming fluke, something blue and bright sparks off fat fingers. The baby squeals. The Sister looks ill.

“You both must be exhausted from your journey.” The Sister says. “Gerda will show you to your room where you can be made comfortable until we have time to discuss what this could mean.”

…

It is her bedroom. She knows it. She remembers it down to the last crack in the last stone. She shows each facet to Iduna who sleeps through most of it while Askr paces anxiously.

“Is this what home feels like? Like ghosts and formalities?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes home feels like that.”

She puts Iduna on the bed and bends to smell her neck. It is smell unlike any other so fresh and primal. She had thought her love for Askr had been all consuming, but that was before she held Iduna.

She goes to the chest beneath the window and opens it. Inside she finds the thick blankets she knew were kept there. She removes three and wraps them around her shoulders like a cape. The motion is effortless. She has done this before.

Of course she has.

This is her home.

She is home, but it is not what she thought it would be.

…

The Sister does not come for hours. Dinner trays are sent to the room and a servant Anna recognizes but does not remember is explicit in stating which tray belongs to whom. It is a rich meal of roast beef, soup, and dessert of frozen cream. These are her favorite foods, she realizes.

How strange it is to live a day you are sure you have lived before.

She inhales it all. She had not realized she was so hungry, but after months of travel food and its cold inconsistency this warm meal is a luxury. She finishes it all and could still eat more, but she won’t.

She lays on the bed besides the sleeping Iduna after the meal, suddenly feeling so tired. She kisses the babe’s soft cheek and whispers: “Mommy loves you.”

Then she falls into a dark sleep.

…..

…..

…..

**.vii  
British Honduras**

…..

_They took everything this time around. Every memory from the before and the after. All they left was his smile, his warmth, so she would not be too afraid when she woke. They took her child from her mind, each shred of her, but they did not stop there. They took her ability to conceive. The risk was too great and there was no room for error this time._

_She could not return again. Not with Iduna here raised in the care of her aunt. Her mind could not stand another erasure. It would break her and all their efforts would be for naught.  
_

_So they took it all._

_She slept the entire journey across the Atlantic. The sleeping crystal the trolls gave them assured them of that.  
_

_He made the mistake of not taking her far enough away the first time. He would not make that mistake again._

…

This version of her loves the ruins of Mayan temples lost deep in overgrown jungles. She loves tracing her fingers over images carved in stone. She loves hearing the tales of First Father, of jealous gods, and dead walking among the stars. She loves their history because she does not have her own.

She loves turquoise and silver jewelry and bedecks herself accordingly. She loves the rich terracotta earth and has taken to watching artisans create beautiful pots and sculptures from the earth’s bounty. She loves the people with their dark eyes and easy smiles.

She loves the heat, permanent and stifling. She loves the food (she has never had chocolate this rich). She loves the way the men and women dance in the square.

But most of all, she loves him.

…

How many lifetimes had he loved her? How many incarnations of this one woman has he been inextricably bound to? More than one man with one life could know was possible.

She is knee deep in the crystal waters of the ocean barefoot and burned with her skirts hiked up around her hips. She lets her red hair flow wild here and the wind blows bright strands across matching cheeks. She is beautiful and reckless and entirely his, but at a price.

“Come in now. Come in and let us find a meal.”

He calls from the shore. He never goes in with her. He is too tired.

“And who are you to tell me what to do, sir?” She lifts her skirts a bit higher and flirts.

“I am the one who cares for you. I am your husband.”

“And who am I?” She asks with a playful wink in her smile that he cannot return.

He holds out a hand and she saunters towards it. She slips slender fingers onto his rough palm and he closes his hand around hers. He knows the shape of this hand on every part of him. They are small hands, capable hands, weighed down with impractical rings and bobbles. She has never known the need to work with these hands. She never will. They have made sure of it.

They have made sure of everything this time, and yet part of him still longs for the day that he will wake up with Anna beside him again.

He sighs and draws a smile on his face. He may not have her on his terms, but he has her. He has her and he loves her and to want more in these circumstances would be selfish.

“You are Embla and you are my home.”


End file.
